


Impractical Magic

by Enterprisingly



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Background Relationships, Drama, Ensemble Cast, F/M, Human Disaster Percy, M/M, Multi, Poly Characters, Psychological Horror, Romance, Slow Burn, Small Town Gothic, So Many Cameos, Urban Fantasy, Witch Vex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-11 08:34:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8972266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enterprisingly/pseuds/Enterprisingly
Summary: The murder of his entire family leaves Percy's life in chaos and sets him on a crash course with ruin. A chance encounter introduces him to a witch named Vex'ahlia, who might be willing to help him... for a price. But Vex has demons of her own and helping Percy will mean confronting them or facing the consequences.(The Urban Fantasy AU)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well. As usual with my writing, this was not supposed to happen.
> 
> Many thanks to Narrendor for the beta help and for egging me on when I started talking about this idea. 
> 
> Some Notes:
> 
> This is going to get a bit dark. I'd say if you made it through the Whitestone arc then you'll probably be fine but if I decide to play further into the horror aspects of this story later down the line, I'll give some warning.
> 
> I'm not exactly sure how long this will be. I've set the chapter count at 6 for right now, but chances are this will be longer. I have three chapters written thus far and I'm definitely not a the halfway point yet so we'll see how this goes. Normally I don't start posting works until I'm basically done with them but CR is on winter break right now and I get the feeling that the fandom may be kind of hungry for some new content so I thought I might help out.

There’s a man lying in the shrubbery. His head is hidden beneath the dense green foliage of the boxwoods and his legs stretch out before him, partially blocking the gravel path to her front door. Vex’ahlia stops so abruptly that Trinket, her enormous bear of a dog has no time to react and collides with the back of her legs, nearly knocking her over.

Normally, Vex is not the sort of woman who cares too much about things like casual vagrancy. After all the Arts District is not exactly the nicest part of Whitestone, and if she’s being honest, this isn’t the first time that she’s jogged down her front stoop to find someone sleeping in her yard.

But this man is not the sort of person who one typically finds sleeping in a shrubbery.

He is dressed _far_ too nicely. What with his shiny shoes, tidy, tailored suit, and silver tie-pin that glints as his chest rises and falls, he looks more like a lost lawyer than anything else.

And then there’s the smoke.

Thin, black wisps of it that curl off of his body like a miasma before dissipating in the early morning sun. It has the fuzzy, out-of-focus quality that comes from using her Witch-Sight and she can’t look at it for too long before it makes her eyes water and her head hurt. He lays there amongst the bushes and flowers of Keyleth’s carefully maintained garden, smoking like a fire burning low.

And _well_. If this isn’t just the weirdest thing she’s seen in a while, which is saying something, since weird is sort of the name of her game.

Trinket whines and Vex pats his head absentmindedly, not looking away from the smoke-wreathed figure on the ground before her.

“Hush, buddy.” She tells the dog, before taking a few slow steps towards the man.

He doesn’t look dangerous, lying there in the bushes, but the smoke is worrying, and nothing good has ever come from surprising strangers who are sleeping in public. She debates briefly upon the merits of just leaving him, or perhaps calling Vax so that her twin can deal with this mess, but in the end, pragmatism wins out. Vax has gone to Emon and won’t be home for at least another three hours and even then, there’s not much that he could do to protect her that she can’t just as easily do for herself.

Besides, she can’t exactly leave the man sleeping in her front yard. She has places to go, people to see, a dog to walk and all that.

Vex clears her throat.

“Wakey wakey, darling,” she says.

No response.

Vex walks closer and nudges the man with the toe of her tennis shoe.

“I hate to be the one to tell you, but you can’t sleep here.”

He groans and shifts but doesn’t wake.

With a huff, she crouches down and shakes the man’s shoulder.

“Oh for the love of–” Vex begins, but she never gets any further. She catches a glimpse of tousled white hair as her erstwhile visitor shoots upright with a startled gasp, and grabs a hold of her shirt, yanking her off balance.

She lets out an involuntary shriek of terror, nearly toppling back in her effort to get away from him.

“What– Who–?” The man sputters, his blue eyes darting wildly about behind a pair of gold rimmed glasses.

And Vex does what any city witch worth her salt would do in such a situation: she hauls off and punches him square in the jaw, her ring with a sleep sigil on it flashing brightly as the fist connects, and the man drops back into the dirt like a stone.

Of course, once her pulse stops racing and reality sets back in, she is instantly consumed with guilt. Even if he did grab her, he probably didn’t deserve that.

She dithers for a few minutes, gnawing her lip and trying to decide on the best course of action. In retrospect, the man had seemed more panicked than aggressive, but the smoke thing is _freaky_ and Vex knows better than to take anything at face value when magic is involved.

Still, the dilemma of what to do with him remains; she can’t just leave him sleeping in Keyeleth’s garden, and karmically, she owes him at least _something_ to make up for knocking him out.

“Please don’t be evil,” Vex whispers under her breath, as she hooks her hands beneath his armpits and half drags, half carries him towards her house.

He is heavier than Vex expects and she’s red in the face by the time she actually manages to get him situated on the couch. It really doesn’t help that she was forced to pause at the door to unlock her wards so that they’d let him through. It took her a minute, but she managed to bend the spells to her will without being forced to break them.

Holding the man up does give her a good chance to study the creepy black smoke that clings to his body. It sizzles slightly when it touches her skin, bouncing off of the wards against black magic that she had Keyleth tattoo on after the Saundor incident.

While the smoke is undeniably evil, she’s fairly certain that he’s not manifesting it on purpose. His personal level of evilness is something that she will have to gauge at a later date, when he’s actually regained consciousness.

Once she’s gotten him onto the couch she takes her first good, long look at the stranger.

The first thing she does is to use her Witch-Sight to locate the origin of the smoke. Against the glowing light of her home, so saturated with leftover magical energy from herself and Keyleth, the smoke is a sickly, dark stain.

It emanates from the back of man’s right hand, spreading upwards like an oil spill to engulf his body. Even just looking at it makes her feel slightly sick to her stomach and the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end as though there's a predator in the room.

Vex has only ever seen something like this once before, but it’s not the sort of thing that a person could just forget. Once was definitely enough to tell her what she needs to know: her mystery man is Hexed.

“Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ …” Vex hisses, drawing back reflexively.

Hexes are Big Time Black Magic of the sort that Vex tries her hardest to steer clear of, with good reason.

And, as people who don’t mess about with bad things don’t typically encounter the sort of people who are prone to Hexing in the first place, there’s still a fifty-fifty chance that she has just pulled a practitioner of black magic past all of her wards and into her home.

She blinks her eyes twice and her Witch-Sight fades.

He’s younger than she originally thought, probably somewhere around her age. His hair made it difficult to tell at first. It’s the sort of blonde that is so light that it might as well be white; it gets slightly darker towards the roots, but not in a way that seems artificial. Longer on top, a bit shorter around the sides and back; it’s a neat, if slightly fussy haircut that needs regular maintenance to keep it from losing its crisp definition and becoming shaggy.

He has a strong jaw (lightly dusted with white blond stubble and marred by an ugly purplish bruise from where she punched him), a proud nose, and she recalls that his eyes, closed and hidden behind round, gold-framed glasses, were blue like summer skies.

Laying in the shrubbery he had looked skinny, but now that she’s had her hands on him – in the most innocent way possible, of course! – Vex realizes that skinny is not the right word at all. He’s built compact and lean but underneath the fancy suit is a very well muscled man. He’s also tall; standing up he would probably have at least half a head on her.

It’s really a shame about the Hex thing, because he’s exactly her type; so much so that she’s almost relieved that neither Vax nor Keyleth are around right now to call her out on the blatant staring she’s doing. But she is only (mostly) human and he is _very_ pretty.

Trinket whines at her and does the shuffle-y little side-step dance that means he really has to pee.

“I’m sorry buddy! I know you were supposed to get a walk. You’ve been so good.” She coos, before glancing back at the prone form on her couch with a frown. If she doesn’t take Trinket out soon, the Rottweiler mix is going to pee on everything she loves and she will feel like the world's worst dog mother.

But she also can’t leave a possibly evil, definitely Hexed stranger alone in her house with no precautions.

She arranges the man in a slightly more orderly sprawl, removes his shoes (because no matter the circumstances the sofa is the nicest piece of furniture in the living room and shoes are _not_ permitted on it), presses her fingertips to his forehead, and casts a sticking charm on him. Then an extra ward and a truth spell, just for good measure, before following her grateful dog to the front door and back outside.

They take the world’s fastest jog around the block, only stopping long enough for Trinket to do his business in the usual spots, before rushing back to the house. It's warm out, still, though there's a crisp whisper in the September air that hints at the onset of fall. Both she and Trinket could definitely have done with something more substantial; a good walk in the nearby woods perhaps, but she has other concerns to contend with just now so leisure will have to wait.

“There’s a real walk coming later, I promise.” She says, cradling her dog’s big face in her hands. He wags his stumpy nub of a tail and the back half of his body wriggles.

Vex toes out of her running shoes and pads into the living room once more to check on her guest. He’s still asleep, though she can sense that the sleep charm is beginning to fade. Spells with any sort of permanence require preparation and ritual items and time; precisely the sorts of things that she really does not have in this situation.

She makes her way into the kitchen, pulls a glass out of the cupboard and fills it with water, and takes a seat at the round wooden table. Really, this was not how she had planned for her one day off this week to go.

Vex doesn’t have long to brood though. There is a soft tickle in the back of her mind, like the rustle of butterfly wings, and she knows that the sleep spell has just broken.

“Um, hello?” Comes an unfamiliar voice from the living room. It's a lovely voice, low and smooth, though there's a note of panic that cracks it on the end. His accent is posh; far too posh to belong to anyone who comes from her neck of the woods and Vex wonders again what someone like him is even doing in her neighborhood in the first place.

She takes a deep, steadying breath, sets her water glass aside and gets to her feet.

_Step one: ascertain evilness, step two: come up with the rest of the plan._

 

* * *

 

Percy wakes up in an unfamiliar place with an aching head – disoriented, but not terribly surprised. This is not the first time that this has happened, nor is it likely to be the last.

Along with everything else that has gone wrong with his life, he’s recently found himself with a nasty sleepwalking habit that frequently results in him waking up in all manner of less than ideal situations.

He blinks furiously, willing his eyes to refocus so that he can get his bearings. Slowly, the world around him begins to clear, though that does not actually do much to alleviate his confusion. The room where he now finds himself is utterly unfamiliar to him.

If Percy’s being honest, the fact that he’s in a room at all is a curious thing. On the mornings following his… _misadventures,_ he’s far more accustomed to waking up in alleys or under park benches rather than anywhere civilized.

He seems to be laying on a cream-colored sofa, slightly worn, but clean and when turns his head to look he can see that across the way there is an old TV set perched on a rickety looking shelf. Additional furniture includes a coffee table (water-stained and scratched, covered candles, and an assortment of books and knick knacks) a set of cozy arm chairs, and a cushion that looks as though it might be a dog bed.

Every horizontal surface not otherwise occupied, is covered with plants. Their vines and leaves and flowers overflow out of pots and spill about wherever they please. Mismatched art, concert posters, and some incredibly loud floral tapestries are doing their best to disguise the bare white walls.

Glancing down he can see that he is still fully clothed, though his shoes have been removed, leaving him in his blue and white striped socks. At least he doesn’t seem to have been robbed, which is a small blessing; his phone and wallet are an uncomfortable lump against the back of his thigh.

Percy cranes his head back to examine the other half of the room. There’s a doorway just behind him, but the lights are dim in the room beyond and in combination with his still throbbing skull and the sparkly, beaded curtain in the doorway obscure anything outside the confines of the strange room.

He wracks his brain, trying his hardest to remember anything from before that might give him a clue as to where he is or how he came to be there, but as usual there is only darkness.

Percy attempts to sit up, but doesn’t make it very far.

There is nothing physical binding him to the sofa, and he is free to wriggle and twist about as much as he likes, but the minute he makes any attempt to rise from his prone position, a great and invisible pressure exerts itself upon him, holding him in place. He thrashes against the invisible bonds, but there is no give at all.

Which just really won’t do.

Percy tries (and mostly succeeds) not to panic, but he’s not proud of the way that his voice cracks when he calls out: “Um, hello?”

Silence meets his ears. He clears his throat and tries again.

“Is… is anyone here? I… ah… I seem to be stuck to your couch…”

There’s a clatter behind him, the pattering sound of claws on wood followed by footsteps and then the jangle of the beaded curtain and seconds later Percy finds himself nose to nose with the largest dog he’s ever seen.

The animal licks its lips, long pink tongue lolling out of it’s great brown muzzle, before it proceeds to aggressively snuffle at Percy’s face, cold nose pushing his glasses askew.

He sputters and wriggles, trying desperately to avoid the onslaught of slobber with little success.

“Oh Trinket, no! Stop that!” Says a high female voice, and there’s a wuff of indignation as the dog is shoved away. “Leave him alone.”

Percy blinks up – smudged and crooked glasses making his vision blurry once again – and into the face of his captor. From what he can tell, she has blue eyes, dark hair pulled into a haphazard braid, and is using the greater portion of her slim frame to shove the dog out of the way, though she doesn’t take her eyes off of him for a second.

He finds himself for once at a loss for words. What exactly _is_ one supposed to say upon finding themselves held prisoner on a sofa by what amounts to a girl and her dog?

“That’s quite the Hex you have on you, darling,” says the woman, as if she’s simply telling him that it’s supposed to rain later.

Percy blinks, perplexed, until he realizes that she is being serious. At which point he begins to laugh, only a little hysterically.

Clearly this woman is angling for something, or just severely delusional. What Percy has might feel like a curse, but it's definitely not magical. Every doctor he's been to regarding his nighttime wandering has been in firm agreement: it’s acute stress leading to somnambulism and related behaviors.

“Sorry, but I'm afraid you're mistaken. Last time I checked, sleepwalking still isn’t supernatural.” He says, finally getting ahold of himself.

The woman crosses her arms, not looking convinced in the slightest.

Strangely, Percy finds himself thinking about the time when he had nearly burned his family home down as a teenager because he was doing science in the garage, where his parents has allowed him to set up a workshop of sorts, and he got a bit carried away.

One explosion, three fire trucks, and six miserable hours at the Emergency Room to have his various burns bandaged and Healed later, he found himself sitting on the very uncomfortable leather couch in his parents formal drawing room, said parents standing before him, with their arms crossed, and matching displeased frowns on their faces.

In wild contrast to the comfortable sitting room just across the hall, the drawing room was designed to intimidate. It was used mostly as a place for his parents to entertain guests who needed a reminder of _exactly who it was_ that they were dealing with. It was the sort of room that the de Rolo’s never had to tell any of their seven children to stay out of, because it had an aura about it that said _you do not measure up to our standards_.

The combined force of his parent’s wintery gaze and the weight of the room itself pressed down on him and he found himself fighting hard against the urge to curl back into the sofa.

“Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III,” his mother had said, dragging his name out from between her clenched teeth with considerable effort, “what _were_ you thinking?”

He didn’t have a good answer.

Somehow, that is the closest comparison that Percy has for the situation he finds himself in as the woman flicks her wrist and he is propelled suddenly into an upright, seated position.

This house is nowhere nearly so grand, or grandiose, as Whitestone Manor, nor are the figures who are looking him over anything even remotely like his parents (being that one is an enormous dog and the other is an attractive woman in a black band shirt and a pair of well worn jeans. But the effect of the situation is astonishingly similar.

The woman is _definitely_ looking at him in a way that leaves Percy with absolutely no illusions about the fact that she is weighing and measuring him (and most likely finding him wanting).

“What were you doing, sleeping in my front yard?” She says, changing the subject abruptly.

“Look, I sleepwalk. It’s inconvenient but not sinister.” He says. “Sometimes I just get up and wander around at night.”

The girl narrows her eyes. “No, I don’t think that’s quite it.”

Percy frowns and sits up straighter, eyeing the woman with a great deal more suspicion now.

“I beg your pardon? Frankly it’s not really any of your business.” When all else fails, being pompous usually does the trick, “I’m terribly sorry for any inconvenience that I may have caused but–”

“Nope,” she cuts him off, utterly unfazed, “see, here’s the thing. You ruined my roommate’s _really lovely_ garden by sleeping in it. And on the subject of sleeping: my yard is _not_ the place to be doing that.”

She pins him with a frigid glare.

“Since you brought your lovely little mystery Hex onto my property, you’ve made it my business. So you’re just going to have to do better than that, darling.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” He asks. “I’ve told you, I’m not Hexed.”

The woman looks at him like she thinks he’s particularly slow on the uptake. “I’m a witch, darling. I know a Hex when I see one.”

Magic is sort of an odd subject. It was around a long time ago, back before the age of electricity and machines and then there was a while where it mostly just sort of vanished and no one really thought to question it too much, because in a lot of ways, not having magic around made things easier.

But in the last few decades, something had happened and magic began to slowly bleed back into the world. These days it’s more like an open secret; something that everyone is vaguely aware of, but most people avoid talking about it unless they need it for something.

Weird things happened when magic wasn’t around and weird things happen now that it is back. Not much has changed. It’s an undercurrent that can be seen everywhere if one is inclined to look hard enough. Percy, who has always preferred the hard sciences to anything magical, has always considered it more unnerving and inconvenient than anything else.

He therefore has essentially no first hand experience with magic and he finds himself profoundly ill equipped to handle this situation.

“Oh.” He says.

“I believe you were going to tell me your story. You know, in exchange for my troubles.” She prompts in the tone of someone who is used to being obeyed.

“If it was such an inconvenience, you didn’t need to bring me into your house.” He grumbles, but there’s no real venom in his words, “If you would kindly let me up, I will get out of your hair and we can both pretend that none of this ever happened.”

He feels as though he has accidentally swam far out into the ocean, to where the swells are far too large and the water is much too deep. Clearly this woman is delusional; there is simply no way that anyone could have Hexed him. She is the first person with any real magic that he has even met in ages.

Percy swallows hard, mind racing as he tries desperately to think of anything that he can say that will make her believe him.

 

“Look,” He says at last, voice desperate, “I honestly and truly do not know what you’re talking about.”

“Are you absolutely positive?” She asks.

His headache pounds behind his eyes and his jaw aches. He goes to pinch the bridge of his nose, only to realize that his arms are still mostly bound to his sides, and he sighs.

“Truly and completely, to the absolute best of my knowledge.” He says, solemnly.

“Hmm.” She replies, still not sounding too convinced.

Percy resists the urge to scream.

“Look, I can’t tell you much more than that. I don’t know _why_ I was sleeping in your yard and I know that’s not very comforting, but this is just… it’s just something that happens to me sometimes. I’m very sorry about your friend’s garden and any inconvenience that I might have caused but… all I want to do is go home and lament my problems in peace.” He looks up at the woman, “Please; just let me go and I promise to never darken your doorstep _ever again_.”

She doesn’t say anything for a minute, just cocks her head slightly and taps a finger against her bottom lip, staring him down all the while. Then her expression shifts to one of resigned acceptance and she snaps her fingers.

In an instant, all of the invisible pressure that had been holding Percy in place is gone and he struggles to remain upright, as though he’s a puppet whose strings had just been cut.

“Sorry darling; you can’t be too careful with these sorts of things.” She says with a shrug, as she watches Percy shake the pins and needles out of his stiff arms and climb slowly to his feet.

The woman crosses the room, the dog close on her heels, and she holds her hand out to him.

“Vex’ahlia.” She says.

“What?” He replies, his much abused brain still struggling to understand the sudden shift of mood in his mysterious captor-cum-host. This close he can see that her ears arc up into small points that poke through the dark fall of her raven-wing hair; the tell-tale mark of elf-blood.

“It’s my name, darling. And this is the part where you tell me yours.”

He takes her hand with no small amount of trepidation and feels a static frisson of energy when their skin meets.

“You can call me Percy,” He says and he shakes her hand, a little stiffly.

She smiles up at him. “You know, it’s a good thing you didn’t try lying to me. Trinket here hates liars.”

He looks down at the dog who meets his eyes and licks his chops.

“And how can you be so sure that I was being honest?” Then, realizing how that must have sounded, he backpedals rapidly, “Not that I’m implying anything else, of course.”

He clears his throat and scratches awkwardly at the back of his neck.

There’s another static crackle across the skin of his palm and his eyes snap up to meet Vex’ahlia’s.

A chuckle escapes from her lips and she shrugs casually.

“Truth spell.” She says, with a wink, letting his hand fall and taking a step back. “You never can be too careful, right?”

“Right,” Percy replies faintly.

 

* * *

 

Their interaction after she releases him from the prison of the couch is stilted and awkward, which Vex supposes is only natural seeing as how their meeting was truly not under the most ideal of circumstances. He did ruin Keyleth’s garden and she did technically hold him prisoner on her sofa. Vex would say that they’re about even but she’s not sure that Percy feels quite the same; he’s been rather short with her since she let him up and she can’t really blame him for it.

They sit across from each other at the kitchen table, pretending to drink from their still full water glasses, and not saying much.

She studies him from beneath her lashes while he fiddles with his phone, making arrangements for a car to come pick him up. Awake, it’s easy to see that her first estimation about him – that he absolutely did not belong in her neighborhood – was spot on.

It’s not just the clothing; Percy has the sort of quiet self possession and entitlement that people born with a heaping amount of privilege (and money) usually do. He’s not overt or obnoxious about it, not the way her father is, but it clings to him just as much as the smoke does. The fact that no one robbed him as he slept is actually a miracle in its own right.

He looks up just in time to catch her studying him. Vex’s first instinct is to be embarrassed, but she doesn’t really _do_ embarrassment – it’s something of a personal policy. Instead she lets a smile curl across her lips and gives him a wink, just to see what happens.

Percy turns a delightful shade of pink and his eyes dart around the room as he suddenly loses the ability to meet her gaze.

“You know…” Vex says, casually, “it’s not easy but Hexes can be broken.”

The color drains out of Percy’s face just as suddenly as it appeared and his lips thin into a line.

“I keep telling you that I’m not Hexed” He says, a bit stiffly. “You can stop trying to pull whatever con you think you're pulling now; it's not going to work.Any problems I may have are of purely natural origins.”

She leans back in her chair, making the wood creak a little. “And what makes you so sure, oh master of magic?”

He’s silent for a minute and Vex can almost see the gears of his brain ticking away.

“All the doctors I’ve been to have told me that it happens to people sometimes, especially after periods of stress. And recently, I have been _very_ stressed.” Percy says, probably going for dispassion, but just missing his mark. There’s something tight and angry about his words that he cannot quite hide. “That’s all. I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing here–”

“Oh calm down,” Vex says, heaving a sigh, “It’s your problem. If you want to bury your head in the sand, who am I to stop you?”

Percy’s eyes darken and his body stiffens. “I would really like to be done talking about this.”

Vex shrugs. She does feel a little bad for him though; clearly he has no idea just how far down this rabbit hole goes. She wonders about the circumstances of the Hex, how he came to wear such a heavy burden so unknowingly.

But he’s right; this really isn’t any of her business.

“Have it your way, darling; but the next time you find yourself waking up somewhere strange, I do hope it’s as pleasant as my yard.” She says, because she never can resist stirring the pot.

She is robbed of hearing what sort of response Percy might actually have had by the sound of his phone vibrating. It scoots across the tabletop, propelled as though by magic and he hurries to answer it. The conversation is brief- mostly ‘yes’s’ and a very sincere ‘thank you’. When Percy hangs up, he pushes away from the table and gets to his feet.

“Well. That would be my ride, so I think I’ll just be going.” He’s still not meeting her eyes. “Thank you for your… hospitality, I suppose. And again, apologies for the garden and… the stress.”

“Hmm.” Vex says, “Well you certainly did make my morning interesting.”

She gets up and leads Percy to the entryway, where she pauses and impulsively reaches into her pocket, fishing out her keys. On the key-ring, alongside the collection of house keys and mini discount cards is a small gold charm. It’s about the size of a large coin, and it depicts a blazing sun, bisected by an arrow. She slips it off the ring, takes Percy’s hand and drops the charm into his open palm.

Vax had made it for her and she’s sorry to part with it, but as it passes into Percy’s hands the protection sigil feels glad, as though it recognized someone who could desperately use it’s help. Sometimes magical items do just have minds of their own and it’s usually wise to respect their wishes.

“For protection.” Vex says, as he opens his mouth to either protest or ask questions. “I think you might need this more than I do. Even if you don't believe me about the Hex, I hope this helps with whatever you're going through.”

Percy opens and closes his mouth a few times, glancing between her face and the charm in his hand. At last he settles on her face and gives her a strained smile. “Thank you. I’ll… hang onto this.”

Vex lets his hand drop and turns away to open the door, showing him out to the street where a sleek black car is waiting for him.

“You’d better. And consider yourself lucky; I normally charge people for this sort of stuff. Good luck, Percy.”

“Thank you, Vex’ahlia. And… I’m sorry. Again.”

Then Percy walks through the door. There is a momentary hesitation, as he reaches the first step, and Vex almost thinks that he’s going to turn around and say something else, but he doesn’t, so she lets him go.

She doesn’t feel good, watching him climb into the waiting car. As it pulls away from the curb, she gets a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, like she’s just made some sort of mistake but can’t quite put her finger on it yet.

In all honesty, it might just be that letting someone walk away from her in as dire straights as Percy is just does not sit well with her. It’s not like she _wants_ to get involved with whatever mess Percy has gotten himself tangled up in; for starters he’s a stranger and beyond that Vex has no desire to meddle with Hexes or black magic of any kind ever again.

It has a nasty way of drawing everything around it in and consuming it, leaving only rubble and ruin in it’s wake.

By the same token, Vex considers herself a fairly good judge of character and whatever circumstances might have led him to being Hexed, she does not get the sense that Percy is a bad man. A fact which might not stay true if the Hex stays on him for too much longer.

But this is not her fight and Percy is not her problem now.

All the same, the feeling of unease sticks with her all day long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am still in the process of writing this so kudos and comments are _greatly_ appreciated! Also please feel free to come yell at me on [tumblr](http://commandercait.tumblr.com) about Critrole, this fic, or anything really.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Narrendor for the beta help and idea bouncing!

When Vax’ildan finally returns home from picking Keyleth up at the airport, evening is beginning to set in. It’s at least three hours later than Vex had expected them back, but not quite long enough to really cause any sort of worry. Besides, at this time of day the journey from the Emon airport all the way out to the smaller town of Whitestone has a nasty tendency to be held up by traffic.

Vex is sprawled out on the sofa, laptop resting on her stomach, one leg dangling off the edge, absently refreshing her Facebook feed and trying not to think about Percy. Her friend Pike, who has a strange sixth sense about when people need cheering up, has been sending Vex cute animal videos all afternoon and that’s definitely helped some, as had the long hike that she and Trinket had taken in the nearby woods.

The sound of two sets of footsteps tromping up to the stoop and the creak of the front door breaks her focus and has Trinket bounding into the entryway, whimpering with excitement and wagging his stubby tail for all he’s worth.

The house wards thrum happily as they always do when all four of them are safely in residence, and a sense of peace washes over Vex that she hasn’t felt since Keyleth had departed two weeks before.

“Off, _off_.” She hears Vax say and Vex smothers a laugh. Undoubtedly Trinket has reared up onto his hind legs so that he can lick Vax’s face, as is his custom.

There’s a thud as something soft and heavy, likely Keyleth’s duffle bag, is dropped to the floor and then the sound of delighted laughter and happy whimpering as the other woman greets the excited dog.

“Did you miss me? I missed you! I missed you so much! Yes I did!” Keyleth coos.

Vex closes her laptop and gets up to go greet her housemates.

“Welcome home you two, I was starting to think you weren’t coming back.” She says, as she comes through the door.

Keyleth is sitting on the floor, while Trinket licks her face furiously, making sure that she knows how glad he is that she is home again. The dog weighs nearly as much as Vex does, but he’s convinced himself that if he tries hard enough, he too can be a lap dog. In the early days Vax had made a couple half hearted attempts to teach Trinket some slightly better manners about displaying affection, but that never stuck because both Keyleth and Vex were firmly under the dog’s spell.

Keyleth, who is dressed for travel in loose layers and yoga pants, gently pushes the dog aside so she can look up at Vex. Her red hair, tied up into a high ponytail, shines in the lamplight.

“There was a bad wreck on the way out of Emon so we pulled off in Fort Daxio to eat lunch and wait it out. We ended up browsing an outlet mall for like four hours because the traffic just wasn’t clearing.” She says, still scratching Trinket below the collar in the spot he likes.

“Ugh, that’s awful.” Vex says, leaning against the doorframe. “How was everything back home?”

Keyleth smiles, though there’s something sorrowful that lingers in her eyes, “Oh you know. It’s always good to be home, even if it hasn’t quite be the same since my mom died. They just got a new irrigation system installed though and it was nice to see my dad again!” She says, brightening once more.

It’s hard to keep Keyleth down for long; she is sunshine incarnate, which is part of why Vex likes her so much.

Luckily for all parties involved, Keyleth doesn’t seem to have noticed the crushed flower beds or disrupted shrubbery yet, which is good. Wildmount is two six hour flights and a decently long car trip on both ends away and it’s probably best not to trouble Keyleth with the details of the Percy incident just yet.

“Alright you,” Vax says gently, as he reaches down to tug Keyleth back to her feet, “time for dinner then bed.”

She gives Trinket one last solid pat, then allows herself to be pulled to her feet.

“Sir, yes sir!” Keyleth says, throwing in a sassy salute for good measure, and Vax rolls his eyes before tugging her along through living room and into the kitchen.

“I take it you had company today?” Vax says and Vex blinks at him, wondering how he could possibly have known about Percy, before she realizes that there are still two glasses on the table and she curses for forgetting to clear away all the evidence.

It’s not like she’s going to keep this a secret, in fact she really wants to tell her twin about her unusual morning, but right now is not the time. Keyleth has just come back from what was undoubtedly a difficult trip and strangers with Hex problems can definitely wait.

“Mm. Someone stopped by for a bit. Anyway, Keyleth, there’s most of a veggie pizza in the fridge or we can call for take out from that Vegan place you like if that doesn’t work for you.” Vax gives Vex a knowing look and she blinks guilelessly back at him before inclining her head slightly in Keyleth’s direction.

Their roommate is already rummaging through the fridge.

“This will do just fine.” She says, happily fishing out the pizza box and a few bottles of beer. Vax pulls plates out of the cupboard and helpfully passes them around the table.

They all settle into their respective seats while Keyleth divides the pizza amongst their plates. This is one thing that they can all agree on: cold pizza is delicious and anyone who says otherwise is a heathen. It’s part of what keeps the peace in the household at times.

Vax take the beers and uncaps them with the bottle opener that lives permanently on the kitchen table and passes them around.

Vex takes a long drink, before setting the bottle back on the table and turning to Keyleth. It’s a dark beer, called Brass Dragon, imported from Marquet. Vax and Keyleth both love it. Vex cares less for it but she’s not in a picky mood tonight. Alcohol is alcohol and it’s been a long day.

“So, darling, tell us everything.” She says, eager to focus on Keyleth’s family drama for a bit.

Nature witchcraft is, for the most part, hereditary. It is also unusual because it is one of the few kinds of magic that hung around even during the lull when magic mostly vanished from the world. Most nature witches can trace their lineage back to one clan or another of Ashari Druids and Keyleth is no different. Her family hails from a remote city to the north of Wildmount and most of them would rather die than leave the remote sanctuary of their community. So every year or so, Keyleth – who flourishes and thrives in the city, but still misses her family dearly – goes back for a visit.

Unfortunately, the past few visits have been difficult.

Some years before, Keyleth’s mother had perished under tragic – and somewhat mysterious – circumstances and the family had never quite recovered. These days Keyleth’s visits are usually part family therapy session and part trip down memory lane. Which is to say they are draining and emotional and Keyleth may put on a tough face, but Vex knows all too well how deep the pain of losing a loving parent runs.

“Thanks,” Keyleth says, around a mouthful of pizza, so it comes out more like _thankthf_ , “for taking care of all of my plants while I was gone. I know there’s kind of a lot of them.”

Vex winces slightly and plasters on a convincing smile. She tries hard not to think of smushed begonias and tattered ivy.

“Of course, it was no trouble.” She says, hoping that her voice doesn’t betray any of her guilt over the bit of garden that Percy had disturbed. It’s not even her fault but she feels bad about it all the same.

Vax gives her a meaningful look. There’s no point in trying to lie to her twin; he doesn’t need truth spells or magic at all to be able to tell when she isn’t being honest with him. It’s both incredibly irritating and endearing.

_Ugh_ , Vex thinks. She is absolutely not looking forward to their impending conversation.

 

* * *

 

The towncar drops him off outside of the gates of Whitestone Estate. The driver offers to take him to the door, but to be honest, Percy could use the exercise.

Beneath his feet the white gravel of the driveway crunches as he walks and a light breeze swirls through the trees around him, rustling leaves and causing his jacket to flare back.

He’s trying (and failing) to keep from replaying Vex’ahlia’s words over and over in his head.

_I know a Hex when I see one,_ She had said, keen blue eyes staring from beneath the fan of her dark lashes as she pried her way into all of his personal business like it was her right.

It’s all ludicrous, of course. There’s no magic here; just a lot of stress and a particularly bad reaction to the brutal murder of his entire family.

_Can one even_ have _a good reaction to that,_ Percy wonders darkly.

Of course he’s sleepwalking; it’s a miracle he’s just getting dressed and wandering into bad parts of town. To be honest he’s shocked that he hasn’t woken up fully naked and carrying a loaded gun in the town square yet, but with the way his year has been going, Percy can only assume that’s what’s coming next.

He’s seen every sleep specialist in the region and the results are conclusive: he’s an anxious mess who’s trying to work himself to death. Nothing mysterious about that one.

_No_ , Percy thinks, setting his shoulders as he continues to walk towards the manor, _either she was imagining things or she realized who I was and was angling for money._

Whitestone is a sprawling three story manor built, as the name might suggest, almost entirely from blocks of beautiful white marble. The home and the grounds upon which it sits, are nestled comfortably in the northern end of the Garden District, overlooking the foothills of the surrounding mountains.

It is from the estate that the city took its name and it has been in the de Rolo family for generations, passing from family head to eldest heir for as long as anyone cares to remember, and the grand home stood as a testament to the unbreakable strength of the de Rolo line, unchallenged, unbroken – until the arrival of the Briarwoods.

Now, there are no de Rolos, save Percy, and everything that the family had worked for lies crumbled into dust. Whitestone Manor stands like a mausoleum; a monument to people who have come before.

These days Percy doesn’t so much consider himself a resident of the home as it’s last caretaker. Bound by things that even he could not quite articulate, to remain there until he too becomes dust.

His even strides carry him rapidly up the drive towards the front doors of the house, but he turns right before he gets there, heading down a smaller side path that leads towards the kitchen door. He never uses the front door if he can help it, preferring instead to spend his time in parts of the house that hold fewer memories of the days when the silent, dark halls were filled with laughter and warm light.

The kitchen door squeaks slightly when Percy pulls it open and the strong smell of lemon hits his nose, letting him know that the housekeepers have been by recently. It feels a little wasteful, having people come in to clean the home that he barely uses, but while he can’t quite bring himself to venture out into the main house often, it also feels sacrilegious to let it go to ruin.

And besides, there isn’t much else for him to do with the fortune that sits in the de Rolo family treasury.

Percy walks through the kitchen, down what was originally a servant’s hallway in times long since passed, and up one of the back staircases; a spindly ironwork thing that corkscrews all the way from the basement to the third floor and lets him out right next to his rooms without forcing him to endure much time in the main house.

Once safely ensconced in the familiar surroundings of his bedroom, some of the tension that has tied his shoulders into knots eases slightly and Percy leans back against the door, exhaling through his nose.

This is the one space where he still feels any sense of peace and safety inside of Whitestone. It is not the room that he occupied as a child. That room, along with those where his siblings and parents had slept, now sits empty on the floor below. Percy has taken over the use of one of the guest suites on the third level, where the wide windows give him a sweeping view across the estate and the Garden District beyond. More importantly, these rooms are neutral to him; they hold no memories – good or bad – and he can sometimes fool himself into believing that the silence in the halls is because he is so very far from the rest of the house.

Warm afternoon sunlight pours through the windows, gilding the room and reminding Percy that time is of the essence. He had things to attend to and most of his day has already been eaten up by the inconvenience of his misadventure with Vex’ahlia.

With some effort he manages to force himself away from the door, before shrugging his jacket off of his shoulders.

A soft, metallic clink hits his ear as he does, and Percy glances down to see that the small charm the witch had pressed into his palm had fallen out of the pocket.

It lays on the floor, glinting up at him in the light. He stoops to pick it up and feels a small electric tingle when the bare flesh of his fingers makes contact with the metal.

Percy stares at it for a while, turning it over and over between his fingers. It looks, for all the world, like nothing more than a fancy coin with a small hole bored through it, but seems to nearly vibrate in his hand.

He shakes his head. It’s a cheap party trick, making something vibrate on contact. Vex’ahlia had said that it would protect him. It’s a nice sentiment, but Percy is fairly certain that this coin is about as useful as a wet napkin.

With a shake of his head, Percy drops the coin into the silver bowl where he leaves his car keys and puts it out of his mind.

He loosens his tie and takes a seat at the large desk that sits before the window, turning his laptop on and cracking his knuckles. As the computer boots up, he leans his head back into the leather chair, allowing his eyes to drift shut. Like most days after one of his late night wanderings, he is tired and worn thin; all of his muscles ache and there’s the dizzy sense of displacement that comes from having lost a chunk of his life.

In a better world, Percy would have preferred just to go straight to bed. But neither the world nor his work will stop just because his life is spiraling into chaos, and indeed his inbox is overflowing when it finally pops open.

Percy stifles a yawn and sets to work, sorting through the messages and wishing that all of his problems could be dealt with with such efficiency.

 

* * *

 

Keyleth has only just shuffled off to her bed, yawning and mumbling goodnights all around, when Vax corners his twin.

“Alright, sister,” he says, as he rinses Keyleth’s plate and sticks it on the dish rack next to the other two to dry, “You’ve been keeping secrets. Spill.”

Vex rolls her eyes. “It’s no big deal, Vax. Just… I don’t know… it was all a bit strange and I didn’t want to get into it with Keyleth around because it sort of involves her plants… and ah… the death of a few of them.” She bites her lip.

Vax dries his hands on a dishtowel and looks back over his shoulder incredulously. “Well this sounds promising.”

“It was the strangest thing… I was going to take Trinket for a walk this morning, but when I went out, I found a man sleeping in the garden.”

“People sleeping in our yard is not _that_ strange.” Vax says, rejoining her at the table.

She shifts, suddenly unable to get comfortable. “Yes well… the thing is… this one was Hexed.”

Vax’s entire demeanor changes in an instant, easy posture suddenly tense and his sharp black brows drawing into a stormy frown. “Please, _please,_ for the love of all that is holy, do not tell me that you let a Hexed stranger – who you found _sleeping in our yard_ , I might add – into the house.”

Vex fidgets, not meeting her brother’s eyes. “If it makes you feel any better about it I didn’t ‘let him in’ so much as I knocked him out and dragged him inside.”

Her twin scrubs his hands over his face and makes a noise like a kettle that has just begun to boil.

“I was gone for five hours. Five hours!” He repeats. “I love you but that was completely mental.”

“Shhh! You’re going to wake Keyleth up.” Vex hisses.

“Good. Then she can help me judge you too.” Vax says, a bit peevishly.

Vex sighs loudly. “Look, I was very careful about the whole thing but… I don’t know! You didn’t see him, Vax. He was in a really bad way and I didn’t exactly have a whole lot of other options. It’s not like I could just leave him laying there in the dirt.”

“Someday that bleeding heart of yours is going to get you killed, Vex’ahlia.” Her brother warns, dropping his hands from his face. “You did reset the wards though, right?”

She nods. “Of course; we’re safe as houses. And besides, he didn’t even know he was Hexed. I asked him about it and he acted like I was out of my mind.”

Vax looks at her for a long while, silent and unreadable.

“You do remember the last time that any of us got mixed up with Hexes, right?” He says, at last, voice low and serious. “You know what they do to people… what they turn them into?”

An involuntary shiver runs it’s way down Vex’s spine and the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

“I couldn’t forget, even if I tried.” She replies, just as softly. “But this guy wasn’t there yet. I don’t think he’s been Hexed for very long. And he definitely doesn’t know what he’s gotten himself into.”

She looks away, staring out the kitchen window, into the little alley behind their house. Night has fallen and there are a few lights on in surrounding houses. The neighborhood is quiet and still for once, save for the sound of the occasional car passing by or the distant wail of sirens. There’s a sliver of golden moon hanging high in the sky, partially obscured by drifting clouds and nearby rooftops.

Here, in the heart of her home, surrounded by all those she loves, Vex can almost pretend that none of it ever happened. But despite the comfort of her home, there is a shard of ice that she will never shake loose, embedded deep in her soul as a keen reminder that she has known true evil.

She shivers again, wrapping her arms around herself.

“Trust me, Vax. I knew what I was doing.”

That, at least seems to mollify him slightly and his shoulders relax a little, dropping back into place. He lets out a heavy sigh.

“I know, Stubby. And I do trust you. But I also worry.” He gives her a crooked smile and she responds in kind, though it’s mostly for show.

Trinket drops his enormous head into Vex’s lap and she strokes the dogs brow idly. The feeling of short, soft fur beneath her fingertips soothes her somewhat and her smile becomes less strained.

The dog has a seemingly innate knowledge of Vex’s emotional state; frequently aware of what she is feeling long before she is and always eager to comfort her when she needs it. He loves her unconditionally and in that moment Vex is swamped by gratitude for her faithful companion.

“Besides,” she says, letting a hint of jest lighten her tone, “Trinket would never have let anything bad happen to me.

Vax lets out a soft chuckle. “Of course not.”

Trinket drools happily on her leg and Vex pulls a face.

“Thanks buddy. Well, I think that’s my cue to call it a day.” She says, gently pushing Trinket’s head off of her lap so that she can stand. “I have to be at the store early tomorrow; Gilmore wants me to open because he’s still out of town at that conference.”

“That’s too bad. I was going to drop by and see him tomorrow. Oh well, I guess I’ll stay here.” Says Vax, letting a sly grin curl the corners of his lips.

“So he’s the only person worth going to see then?” She replies, wryly.

“I see you all the time, Stubby. Shaun is special.”

Vex pretends to gag. “Ugh, it’s so weird when you call him Shaun. It’s bad enough that you and my boss are… _whatever_ you are but you could at least have the decency to pretend that you’re not sleeping with him for my sake?”

Her twin laughs, “Oh like you have any room to talk. Need I remind you about Jarret?”

Vex goes slightly pink, remembering her summer fling from a few years ago, and sweeps imperiously out of the room. “I still say that I win this one; boss trumps running buddy. I don’t make the rules.”

“You keep telling yourself that.” Vax says, switching off the kitchen light as he follows her out into the living room. The beaded curtain rattles and sways as they pass through it.

“I think I shall.” She says.

They amble up the stairs trading barbs and jokes quietly, so as not to wake Keyleth, and Vax bids Vex a good night just outside of her door.

She doesn’t stick around in the hallway long enough to see which of the two remaining bedrooms Vax chooses to spend the night in. Her brother loves fiercely and freely and Vex is very happy to know that there a people out there who will love him back, even if she doesn’t really want to think too hard about the details.

Trinket trails into the room after her and she closes the door behind them. The dog pads over to his bed and curls up into a ball, sighing like a bellows. Vex strips out of her clothing, dropping the garments into the wicker hamper in the corner and pulling on an oversized t-shirt that she stole from Vax years ago. It’s worn and faded, washed so many times that the fabric is perfectly soft.

As she slips between the sheets, Vex closes her eyes and reaches out to her wards, checking to make sure that everything is in order. As usual, they hum happily; warm, gossamer bubbles of light, invisible to anyone without Witch-Sight, that surround the home, protecting the residents.

Content that all is as it should be, Vex lets her focus drift and her awareness of the wards fades to a background haze. Slowly, sleep begins to edge its way into her mind, wrapping around her like a blanket and pulling her into it’s embrace.

Vex dreams of a man in a tree. He calls her name, soft and sorrowful, sweet and longing; promising power and wealth and the chance to walk higher than any mortal could ever dare to dream. His hand becomes a branch as it stretches out towards her; vines curling and unspooling from the fingers, reaching, grasping for hers. Her hand is outstretched, whether to accept or to repel the advance, she can’t quite be sure. The vines touch her skin.

The man in the tree smiles. Green and gold and black bleed up Vex’s arm, snaking under her skin, consuming her. Vines wrap around her body, holding her fast; roots sprout from her feet, anchoring her in the darkness, leaves bloom from her hair. She tries to scream, but finds that she has no lungs to do so.

She no longer has eyes to see with, but she knows that the man in the tree is gone. Vex has become the tree.

There is a white crow roosting in her branches. It looks down at her, shiny eyes like a pair of sapphire beads, searching the space where her face used to be.

It opens its beak.

The shrill of her alarm clock snaps Vex awake and she comes to, drenched in sweat, shaking as though she’s just run a marathon. The dream fades like water slipping through a sieve, leaving Vex with nothing but a lingering sense of dread.

Bright sunlight is pouring through the window, but it does nothing to warm her. Alone in her bed, Vex shivers.

 

* * *

 

Despite his exhaustion, sleep does not come easily that night. Percy lays in his bed, listening to the sounds of the house settling around him and the wind whispering through the trees beyond his window. No matter how tightly he gathers his blankets around him, he cannot get warm.

Unease has been his constant companion for the last year, and it had only grown since his quest to bring the Briarwoods to trial had come to such an unsatisfactory close the month before.

It’s all a heinous farce, of course. The de Rolo family had been alive and well and in the space of an evening spent in the company of the Briarwoods, all of them – save Percy, who had been away at school – had been brutally murdered.

But the Briarwoods, with all their clever words, and sly charm, and connections in high places were as untouchable as could be; and no matter how suspect their presence at the de Rolo’s home on the night of the murder was, there was no court in the county that would take the risk of bringing them to trial.

And they were clever too; none of their associates could be tied to them in any meaningful way. Through magic, and bribery, and most likely a bit more murder, they’d covered their tracks well. Percy – for all his cleverness, all his connections, all his useless money – has no recourse.

Percy’s palm stings and he realizes that he has been clenching his fist so hard that he has left crescent indentations in his skin. He forces his hand to relax and practices the meditative breathing that one of the doctors he’d seen about his sleepwalking had recommended. It hasn’t stopped the problem but it does occasionally make him feel a bit better.

It takes a while but eventually he drops off to sleep.

He’s standing on the grounds of the estate, beside the massive oak tree that lords over the front lawn. The tree has been around for as long – or possibly even longer – than the house itself and Percy has fond memories of climbing up into it’s branches, as a child, high into the sun-dappled leaves. Leaning back against the trunk in the sway of its massive limbs and cracking open a book. He would read up there for hours, legs dangling off the sides, high above the ground, feeling safe not matter how high up he was.

There is no comfort to be found in the tree now. Eight bodies hang limp from the branches; dressed for dinner, pristine except for the blood that spatters across their clothing. One by one the members of his family look up at him, empty eyes boring into his soul.

He wants to move back but he is fixed in place. He cannot run, he cannot scream.

From the darkness below them, a figure rises up, like a serpent uncoiling. At first Percy thinks it’s a man, but there’s something wrong about it; something strange about the way it moves. It billows like smoke, shifts like shadow.

Percy is frozen, paralyzed by a fear he cannot name. The figure looks up at him, and though he cannot be sure why, Percy gets the feeling that it is smiling.

In his mind he hears a voice echo, _“One down, five to go.”_

The shadows all around him rush in and Percy knows no more.

He wakes in a panic, fighting free of the prison of his sheets until he feels the chill air of his room on his bare skin. The terror of the nightmare gives way to the real world sensation of something prickling across the back of his right hand. It feels a bit like accidentally touching a live wire and Percy lets out a startled yelp, clapping his other hand over the abused flesh in reaction. The pain fades just as abruptly as it came and he cautiously uncovers his hand to inspect the offending limb for injury.

There is no wound, but there is a mark. On the back of his hand, as though it had been printed there, is a black letter “I”, about an inch in height. He rubs at it but the mark does not budge. He tries using a bit of spit and scrubbing harder, but that has no effect either. He shoves his glasses onto his face and peers closer at the mark. It looks for all the world like a tattoo, but he’s certain that it wasn’t there when he went to sleep and even his sleepwalking must have _some_ limits. Surely something like that would have woken him up.

Unbidden, Vex’ahlia’s voice rings loud in his memory, _that’s quite a Hex, you’ve got there, darling_ , and he allows himself to wonder again, for a fraction of a second, before shutting down that line of thought.

“Stop it,” he whispers to himself. “This is stress. There’s a good explanation for all of this.”

But even as he says the words, he’s not quite sure he believes them.

As a child, Percy understood that magic existed in an abstract sort of way. There was a girl in his class who levitated sometimes, and his parents were always hosting a constant stream of visitors, some of whom were decidedly non human.

But magic was never something that Percy could wield. He lacked the innate sense, the natural ability required to interact with the forces and currents that wound their way around the world, unseen by most and yet responsible for so much. So like any other object that was not useful to him, he had mostly put magic out of his mind, choosing instead to focus on science.

He had spent his adolescence and young adulthood carefully toeing the line, never causing the sort of ruckus that his younger siblings did and never exhibiting any aptitude for the family trade of politics and law the way his older siblings did, and his parents had been more than content to allow their middle child to dive headlong into the comfortable sanctuary of academia, a haven from which he really had never planned to emerge.

Of course, things had changed.

This direction of thought does little to aid in his relaxation and Percy forces himself to put the murder, and the mark, and all thoughts of magic out of his head, focusing once more on his breathing.

_In and out, in and out._

He drifts off again eventually and when next he wakes, it’s to the sound of his alarm clock.

He rushes through his morning routine, showering with great haste and then stumbling down to the kitchen, where he simultaneously tries to shove a protein bar into his mouth, listen to his voicemails, and get his arms through the sleeves of his jacket. He has very little success with any of those things.

Though his sleep on the nights after one of his misadventures are usually deep, they are rarely restorative and he always wakes with the feeling that he is somehow slightly… less… than he was before. They also leave him clumsy and distracted the morning after. It’s horribly inconvenient, of course, but it’s not like Percy didn’t know to expect something like this today.

He finally gets his arms through the sleeves and chokes down the last of the dry, powdery bar, tossing the wrapper in the bin as he hurries out of the door that connects the kitchen to the garage.

His car is right where he left it two nights ago, occupying a single space in the six car garage that was once designed to hold horse-drawn carriages. It’s a bit odd that he had made it all the way into the city without driving, but he’s long since figured out that he has no trouble getting around, even while sleeping.

Back when all of the de Rolos had lived there, every space, save the one furthest to the right had been taken up by shiny car after shiny car. The right-most space had been taken up by his workbench and tinkering tools; his parents concession to the fact that if they didn’t give their third son somewhere to experiment that wasn’t inside of the main house, they were likely going to regret it.

Of course, they came to regret this decision too, but the loss of his older sister’s car and a portion of the garage was nothing when compared to the potential loss of the entire mansion.

These days, the garage is nearly all workshop and his single car looks a bit ridiculous and lonely sitting there alone. He climbs in and tosses his laptop bag into the passenger seat before switching on the engine and backing out into the early morning sun.

As he pulls away from the house, he catches sight of the black mark on his hand and grimaces.

In his haste to get to work he had almost managed to put his troubles out of his mind for the time.

Eager to distract himself from unhelpful thoughts of the night before, Percy switches on the radio, letting the soothing cadence of the newscaster smooth his frayed nerves. The man drones on about an upcoming summit on the regulation of magic usage in food production, followed by a piece about the newly constructed municipal park in Emon’s Cloudtop District.

As he turns onto the freeway, Percy’s thoughts have settled and drifted to more pressing concerns, and he is hardly paying attention to the radio any more, focused instead on his tasks for the day – he has a meeting with his lawyer about renewing the permits on his family’s mines and he has a funny feeling that it won’t be as simple as he hopes – when the man on the radio says a name that cuts clean through his concentration and nearly causes him to swerve off the road in surprise.

Frantically he turns the volume up as the announcer keeps speaking.

“– the Whitestone Police Department found Alabaster Sierra University’s Professor Matthew Anders in the burnt wreckage of his car, late yesterday afternoon. The car was parked at a scrapyard outside of the Arts District and anyone with information about this event is being asked to come forwards. They have not yet released an official statement about the cause of Anders’ death or the fire, but an inside source revealed that they have not ruled out foul play. Anders rose to global renown this past year when his work as an authority in international law protocol aided in the signing of the Kraghammer accord.”

There's a rushing sound in Percy’s ears and the reporter's voice fades to static. He and his family had known Anders long before he was anything more than an ordinary university professor.

A favorite instructor of Percy’s eldest brother Julius, Anders had been keen to make the acquaintance of an old and politically influential family like the de Rolo’s on a more personal level. It had been a mutually beneficial relationship that had allowed Percy’s father to make use of the professor's knowledge just as the professor enjoyed the inside look at the political machinations of one of the last great houses.

Of course, it had all been a great con in the end. Anders had ingratiated himself to the family, gained their trust, and opened the door for their ruination.

The Briarwoods might have swung the axe, but Anders had handed it to them.

There is something sickly vicious in Percy’s chest that snarls with joy, hearing the news of the professors downfall, and the ferocity of it scares him a little.

He realizes, just in the nick of time that he has been driving on autopilot and he has almost missed the exit for his office. He shakes his head to clear it and signals to move into the exit lane.

The reporter has moved on to other topics by the time that Percy parks his car in the employee garage. As he walks into the building the thought occurs to him, very briefly before he brushes it off like so much useless detritus, that it would seem that he and Anders had both found themselves in the same part of town the day before.

_It's just a coincidence,_ he thinks. The witch has gotten into his head, filling it with nonsense about magic and now he's jumping at shadows.

This is a good thing, after all: Anders got what he deserved. A very evil man is no longer walking free in the world and Percy didn't even have to lift a finger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy crap guys I did _not_ expect the response that this story has gotten! If you're enjoying the story, kudos and comments are greatly appreciated! XOXO


	3. Chapter 3

Two Weeks Later

 

* * *

 

Vex is sitting in the back room of Gilmore’s Glorious Goods, shoes off, one foot tucked up underneath her legs as she carefully scans through the store’s expense report for the third quarter of the year. She sighs and draws another tally mark in her notebook when she spies a suspiciously expensive “business dinner” tucked away between orders of industrial cauldrons and office supplies.

Gilmore might be the shop’s owner, but if he doesn’t stop expensing his extravagant lifestyle, he’s going to spend them all out of jobs. It is the combination of Vex’s brazen fearlessness and her somewhat astonishing head for numbers that convinced Gilmore to hire her on as his accountant – and occasional shop clerk – in the first place, despite her lack of formal education.

Vex will be eternally grateful for the opportunity that he has given her and she lets him know that every day by doing her job as well as she can, even though it means spending a great deal of time scolding her boss like a naughty child.

It’s fine though; over the last three years, Vex and Gilmore have settled into a comfortable working relationship, albeit one with a lot of mutual frustration and affectionate ribbing. No matter what Gilmore’s relationship with her brother might be, he is a good boss and the shop speaks for itself.

Gilmore’s is a well known fixture of Whitestone’s Abadar street, in the town center. It is notable both in terms of appearance and significance. The majority of shops in the town that cater to an arcane clientele fall into one of two categories: off-puttingly seedy or generally useless and filled to the brim with kitsch. Gilmore’s is an exception because it is neither of those things.

Its colorful exterior is welcoming and inviting, it’s location lends it legitimacy, and Gilmore himself has spent years building it’s reputation as _the_ place to shop for the local discerning spellcaster.

The interior more than lives up to the promise of the shop’s name. Shelves of books, old and new, line two of the walls and form something of a small maze in one side of the shop, massive glass cases that boast a myriad of intriguing contraptions and spellcasting implements hold court over the other side. In the center, polished wooden tables are stacked high with candles and scrying balls, potion ingredients and pre-brewed draughts, and satchels of the _Herb of the Month_.

The whole place feels like a jewel box or a magpie’s nest; it smells like cinnamon and there is something invitingly tactile about the wares that Gilmore has selected that renders nearly everyone who enters the store unable to resist the urge to begin exploring.

Gilmore’s is on the other side of town from where Vex lives, but she is usually able to get to work either well before or just after the worst of the rush hour traffic, or what passes for it in a town like Whitestone, so the commute is not that bad, all things considered.

If she had her way, she and her little makeshift family would have moved somewhere nicer (and nearer) but out of the three of them, Vex is the only one making more than minimum wage. Neither night security for the local mine nor flower shop attending pays particularly well. That, combined with the high cost of housing in any of the places that Vex would really like to move to means that for now she just has to make do.

It could be worse; the Arts District was much more dangerous when she and Vax had first moved into their little house just three years before. The twins had mostly been left alone once people had figured out that she was a witch and Vax really wasn’t above threatening people with knives, but there had been a few incidents in the early days that left them a bit shaken.

By the time Keyleth had moved into their third bedroom, the worst that they had to contend with was the occasional drunken shouting match in the back alley or sleeping bum in the yard.

That train of thought, of course, leads to Percy, who has become something of a frequent visitor to her idle musings. He’s a puzzle that she couldn’t solve and Vex’s inquisitive mind can’t seem to help coming back to him over and over.

She’s so caught up in her thoughts that she doesn’t even notice the sound of the door to the office opening and she whirls around, heart leaping into her throat, when she feels a hand land on her shoulder.

“Whoops,” Says Gilmore with a gentle, somewhat teasing grin, “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“For the love of– Gilmore I almost cursed you!” She says, pressing a hand against her chest as she sags back into the chair.

Gilmore chuckles and walks over to his desk on the other side of the room. “You wouldn’t be the first and I doubt you’d be the last.”

Vex glares at him. “Just for that I’m going to make you take responsibility for _all_ the business dinners I’ve counted up, not just the ones I suspect were really dates with my brother.”

Gilmore smiles serenely, the corners of his dark eyes crinkling up in the way they always do when Vax is mentioned. “And how is dear, sweet Vax’ildan doing these days?”

She makes a disgusted noise and levels Gilmore with a knowing look. “The same as I’m assuming he was last Thursday when you took him out to dinner.”

Her boss laughs and begins flipping through the mail on his desk. “I suppose you’ve got me there. Don’t worry, we were talking business, not just pleasure. I’m certain he’s mentioned that I’m interested in buying some of those sigils that he makes?”

Vex stops pulling disgusted faces and grows serious. “He has. They’re good too, and I’m not just saying that as his sister.”

Gilmore nods. “That’s why I’ve approached him about doing some custom work for the shop.”

“I think you should,” Vex says, turning back to her spreadsheet. She looks through her calculations again, triple checking her work, “We’ve done really well this last quarter, but I’ve heard some talk recently that there might be a shop opening up near the University soon and if that’s the case then we’re going to need to work harder to keep our customers from straying.”

“Mm, of course.” Says Gilmore, “Though it is just rumors and whispers as of now, I see no reason not to make this offer to Vax, seeing as how it will benefit us both no matter what the future holds. If you would be so kind as to keep this under your hat until I get the chance to take him out for a drink to make the official offer…?”

WIth a hearty sigh, Vex rolls her eyes. “Only if you promise not to expense this outing like the rest of them.”

“Naturally.” Gilmore replies, not sounding sincere in the slightest.

Vex silently adds another tally to her notebook.

 

* * *

 

Fall descends upon Whitestone with a swiftness the likes of which Percy cannot recall having experienced before. In the short span of a week, the warmth of summer is sundered by the onset of a cool autumn and endless sunny days are replaced by gray skies peppered with occasional rain storms that roll down from the Alabaster Sierras to soak the lowlands.

It's one such storm that jolts him back to consciousness as a loud crack of thunder echoes across the sky. It takes a few minutes for Percy to get his bearings; the world swims before him as though he's intoxicated and he blinks furiously, trying to force his eyes to focus. Eventually they do and he discovers that the strange, dark shapes he’s seeing are the underside of a park bench.

He scoots, with some difficulty due to the pain that blooms across his ribs every time that he moves, out from underneath the bench so that he can sit up and take stock of his situation.

He recognizes the place instantly, having been there many a time in the past. Grey Hunt Park sits just between the center of town and the Garden District, marking a sort of barrier between the commercial area of Whitestone and some of the most lavish homes in the town.

A gust of wind makes him shiver and the first fat droplets of rain begin to fall from the sky, drawing his attention back to the present. The night before is an empty space in his head, which gapes like an open wound, and the feeling of complete disorientation that takes hold of him whenever he wakes up like this definitely has not gotten less upsetting over time.

Every breath that he takes makes his chest ache and Percy can tell that underneath his clothing, his body is a mess of bruises. His throat is parched and scratchy, the taste of smoke coating his tongue unpleasantly, and as he begins swiping through his phone, he notices something that looks suspiciously like blood caked beneath his nails.

By the time he makes it back to the estate – he catches a cab to somewhere in the north end of the Garden District and walks from there, doing his best to keep his head low and praying that the driver didn’t recognize him – the shakes have set in. He doesn’t even have to feign the sound of chattering teeth when he calls his office to tell them that he isn’t feeling well and won’t be coming in. In a daze, Percy stumbles up to his room.

He strips out of his jacket, letting it fall carelessly to the ground and crawls into his bed, paying no mind to the way that the dirt from his clothing is undoubtedly going to leave smudges on his sheets, or the fact that everything he’s wearing is soaked and he’s likely going to catch cold. Percy has just enough sense left to remove his glasses and set them on his night table before he passes into unconsciousness and knows no more.

When he wakes again, it’s dark in his room. The storm outside has tapered off, though Percy’s damp clothing and the clinging sheets are a cold reminder that it had been a truly torrential downpour. His dreams were a chaotic mess of nightmare imagery, but the harder he tries to remember them, the further they slip from his grasp.

Glancing to his left Percy catches sight of the clock on his bedside table. The glowing numbers are uncomfortably bright to his aching eyes. It reads 4:03 pm and Percy grimaces, realizing that he's slept the entire day away. With a groan he forces himself up and into a seated position and takes stock of his life. He's still dressed in his filthy clothing, feeling even worse than he had before he slept. He raises his right hand once more to shove his hair out of his eyes and freezes.

Next to the black ‘I’ that had appeared on his skin some weeks before is another, identical mark. More disturbing still are his fingers. The tips are black as pitch, as though he had dipped them into ink and the darkness had crawled its way upwards, flowing into the fine lines and creases in his skin, coloring his nails as if they had been varnished. It doesn’t hurt, not the way it would if he were suffering some sort of ailment.

Despite knowing that it's of no use – neither friction nor soap had done anything to displace the original mark – he rubs his discolored hand against his snow white sheets, trying to remove the stain. As predicted it does not budge.

Something cold settles deep into the pit of his stomach and unbidden, he finds himself thinking about his run in with Vex’ahlia. Surely he can't have been so wrong. He would _know_ if he'd been Hexed. He would have to know, wouldn’t he?

And yet…

He thinks of his dreams; of the black figure, the sleepwalking, the bruises on his body, and the blood beneath his nails.

Percy clenches his fists and looks down at them as if his skin will present him with the answers that he is missing. Nothing comes, save a strange chilling feeling, that he has forgotten something important.

A shrill ring breaks the silence around him and he starts so hard that the ever tightening muscles in the back of his neck lock up, spasming painfully. Percy leans over the edge of his bed and scrambles to retrieve his phone from the pocket of his crumpled jacket.

He picks up without checking the caller ID, as he levers himself upright once more.

“What?” he snaps into the phone.

“Is this a bad time de Rolo?” his lawyer, Scanlan Shorthalt says.

Percy closes his eyes, trying his best to get his racing pulse back under control. “Sorry, Scanlan. I'm afraid I'm not feeling well today.”

Scanlan sighs, “Well, I’m sorry to bother you, but I have some news that will probably make you feel better, and I thought you might want to hear this from me and not the newspaper; Kerrion Stonefell is dead.”

It's strange, Percy thinks, that the first thing he feels upon hearing those words is not relief or the joy that he had felt upon hearing the news of Anders’ demise, but is instead a strange, empty numbness.

The Briarwood’s left hand man – the one who ensured that his family would _never_ get the justice they deserve – is dead and Percy feels nothing.

“Are you sure?” he asks, faintly.

“Of course I’m sure. What the hell do you think this is; amature hour? Come on Percy, I’m a professional. Give me some credit.”

There’s the sound of shuffling papers and then Scanlan continues, “The police are still trying to keep it quiet but it’s gonna get out by this evening. There was a fire at his home last night. They’re still investigating the cause but my police contact told me that this was definitely an arcane attack. Which is good news for you. You probably won't need to do more than go in and give a statement saying that you might have hated his guts, but that you didn’t kill him. Actually maybe don’t bring up the part about hating him and just stick to the ‘didn’t kill him bit.”

That brings Percy up short. “Why do I even need to say anything at all?”

When Scanlan responds, Percy can practically hear the lawyer rolling his eyes on the other end of the line, as though he is being obtuse on purpose.

“Um, I hate to be the bearer of bad news my friend, but when the guy who botched your family’s murder investigation, who was until just recently acting as the bodyguard of two people who you have publicly accused of murdering your family winds up dead too, you're going to end up on the suspect list.”

“Oh,” Percy says, “Yes I suppose that makes sense.”

“Damn right it does. Come to think of it, this is the second Briarwood associate that has met an untimely end recently. As your lawyer I do have to ask; you didn't have anything to do with this, right?”

Percy opens his mouth to say as much, but before he can get the words out, a wave of unease catches the words in his throat. He thinks about the scent of smoke that still clings to him and the blood beneath his nails.

First Anders and now Stonefell. Two deaths. Two marks. So very much missing time.

He has no idea _how,_ but either there is someone out there who shares all of his grudges or he is somehow doing this himself.

The breath leaves his body and Percy is paralyzed by the weight of the implication.

_That’s quite the Hex you have there, darling._

“Percy?” Scanlan prompts, sounding genuinely concerned for the first time since the conversation began.

“No, sorry. I spaced out for a second. But how could I have been involved? You know that I'm the least magically inclined person in this town.” He’s reasonably certain that he sounds confident enough to sell the statement, even if he’s no longer sure that _he_ believes it.

Seemingly mollified, Scanlan makes a noise of assent. “Keep an ear out for calls from the police and don't talk to any reporters, just in case someone puts two and two together and tries to sensationalize this shitstorm further by dragging the de Rolos into it.”

“Okay.” Percy says, numbly.

“Right, well. You can go back to sleep now; you sound awful.” Scanlan says and then he hangs up before Percy has a chance to respond.

The phone slips from his suddenly limp fingers, falling to the bedspread, and the panic that he has been suppressing for weeks suddenly smashes into his chest in full force.

He has to scramble in order to get to the bathroom in time as nausea churns his stomach. Percy collapses before the toilet and retches violently, expelling little but bile that burns his already smoke-scratched throat. Once he finishes heaving, he collapses back against the wall of his shower, letting the sensation of cool glass anchor him.

His life is spiraling out of control and Percy is so incredibly fucked.

 

* * *

 

Vex is not surprised to see the notice on her door, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a welcome sight either.

The Arts District has been showing signs of gentrification for the last few years and it was only a matter of time before the residents began to feel the economic repercussions.

Still, the notice from her landlord that rent will be going up by nearly $300 is an ugly reminder that the time may soon be approaching when she and her family can no longer afford to live here.

Vex sighs, stuffs the notice back into the envelope, and lets herself into the house.

Keyleth is in the living room, sitting on the floor before the coffee table with a pair of small silver pruning shears and a rather wilted looking plant. She’s speaking softly to it as she cuts away dead leaves and stems that have gone brown, and the plant is revitalizing slowly but surely as she works. In the background the evening news is a quiet murmur on the TV.

Trinket, who is sleeping on his cushion wiggles his stubby tail happily, but remains curled up where he is.

“How’s the patient, Doctor?” Vex says as she toes out of her shoes and shrugs off her raincoat. Vax’s workboots are missing from their customary spot by the door, indicating that her brother has already taken off for the evening.

“It was touch and go at first, but I think we’re gonna make it.” Keyleth replies, shooting Vex a smile over her shoulder.

Vex flops down on the sofa behind her roommate.

“Well at least that makes one of us.” She grouses.

“Uh oh,” Says Keyleth, snipping off another branch, “What’s wrong?”

Vex tosses the envelope onto the coffee table, next to the pile of fallen leaves. “Rent’s going up again next time we renew the lease. And kind of by a lot this time. I think it might be time to start looking for a new place.”

“Well I mean, hey, at least that won’t go into effect until the end of our lease, right? That’s like… what? Two months away? Maybe one of us will win the lottery or… or… I dunno! But it’s still a bit off so that’s good, right?” Says Keyleth, as her voice takes on the sort of squeaky quality that it only gets when she’s trying desperately to remain positive in the face of overwhelmingly bad circumstances.

“Possible but unlikely.” Vex sighs. “Gilmore _just_ gave me a raise too… I thought that for once we might actually have a little breathing room…”

She rolls over onto her side, pillowing her cheek on one of her hands and staring absently at the TV. Money and not having enough of it to live comfortably – or even safely, at times – has been something of a theme in Vex’s life, since her father had thrown his twin children out on their ears when they were sixteen.

Syldor Vessar was a proud man. Even though he himself was not a pure blood elf – those had long since passed into legend – he came from a long line of elf blooded individuals who saw diluting their blood with humans any further as the greatest waste imaginable. His children by way of a human woman had been an ugly reminder of the one time in his life when he had strayed from his path and allowed himself to care about anything outside of the Fey community.

Syldor had taken them in only because he had been legally compelled to when their mother died, and he had been only too glad to be rid of them as soon as possible.

Vex has known hunger, fear, and cold more often than she’s known anything resembling security and she had hoped more than anything, that her job at Gilmore’s might finally be the ticket to a better life that she had been searching for.

But as well as Gilmore pays her and as much as she scrimps and saves and coupons and takes on extra hours and duties in the shop whenever possible, Vex is still the main breadwinner in a house of three and times have been hard recently.

Keyleth has just begun to speak when the story on the screen changes and Vex sits bolt upright, shushing her roommate and flicking her fingers to turn the volume up.

A familiar face stares out at her from the screen, and her mouth falls open with shock as sudden recognition hits her like an arrow to the chest.

On the screen before them is a photo of a dignified looking man and his equally dignified family; the de Rolo’s, according to the bold white caption beneath the image.

They’re a name and photo that Vex is familiar with the way one becomes whenever a sensational news story holds public attention for longer than a week, but they’re not things that she’s ever really given much thought to.

The de Rolo murders, and the subsequent accusation of murder towards a wealthy, local couple called the Briarwoods, by the only family member who had escaped the bloodbath, featured all the ingredients for a perfect news firestorm. A celebrity family, a lot of gruesome carnage that took place at a fancy dinner party, and a police investigation handled so poorly that it could only have been intentional.

On the TV, the nine de Rolo’s dressed in formal clothing stood and sat in a neat crescent, but Vex pays little mind to any of them save the boy standing farthest to the left. His hair is dark in this photo, but he wears the same gold rimmed glasses and his piercing blue eyes are instantly recognizable.

After all, she has been unable to remove that face from her brain for weeks now, like a splinter that she can’t stop picking at, he drifts into her mind on a daily basis. Percy, her reluctant visitor and doomed man in denial, is the last heir of the founding house of Whitestone.

“Vex, what–” Keyleth begins.

“That’s him!” Vex says, jabbing her finger towards the TV, “The guy I told you about, who was sleeping in the garden!”

“You mean the Hexed one who killed my plants what Percival de Rolo?” Says Keyleth, frowning and glancing between Vex and the TV, until the screen changes, newscaster moving on to the next story.

“It was an accident and yes.” Vex says, absentmindedly. “Do you know why the de Rolos were on TV just now?”

Keyleth shrugs. “Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. I just like the background noise.”

“Damn. That’s alright.” Vex mutters, “The timing certainly is uncanny though, isn’t it…”

“Just a bit. I wonder what on earth he was doing down here anyway? The Arts District isn’t exactly the kind of place that guys like that hang out.” Keyleth says thoughtfully.

“Right?” Vex asks, “I thought it was strange at the time too, even before I knew who he was. He stuck out like a sore thumb here.”

Keyleth sets down the scissors and turns to face Vex. “I didn’t think the de Rolos were much for magic. How on earth did he end up Hexed in the first place?”

Vex’s mouth flattens into a grim line. “I don’t know, but I don’t like any of this at all.”

 

* * *

 

Percy feels incredibly foolish as he fishes Vex’ahlia’s golden coin out of the bowl where he left it several weeks before, but he’s running out of options and it can’t hurt to see if the little charm actually helps.

When his black-tipped fingers make contact with the coin he gets a shock like sticking his hand in an electrical socket and he snatches it back, shaking out his tingling fingers. When the feeling subsides, Percy holds both of his hands out before him, turning them over and examining the differences between what had once been mirror appendages.

Gritting his teeth, he tries again, this time with his unblemished left hand. The coin vibrates when he touches it, but there is no pain. It could be a coincidence, but Percy very much doubts that. He closes his fist around the coin, and with a heavy sigh, slips it into his pocket.

“Here goes nothing,” he mutters under his breath.

Percy flexes his right hand, trying to decide upon the best course of action. He can’t exactly go to work with his hand looking like this; people will be justifiably concerned and will ask questions that he won’t have good answers to.

He considers wrapping his hand in bandages and claiming that he’d had a bad burn, but discards that idea quickly. He has burnt his hand before and remembers all too well how annoyingly useless the bandages had made his fingers. He’d get so little done that there would be next to no point to him even going in. Gloves have the same problem of being both impractical and – when worn indoors – noticeable in the worst way.

Percy hates to lose another day in the office; it’s something of a sensitive time for his company as they’re in the middle of renewing the contracts for the Whitestone mines, the quarry that had attracted his ancestors to the town in the first place and one of the primary sources of labor for the town’s residents. But the reality is that this problem is growing from an ignorable inconvenience to a crisis that threatens to destroy his entire life and he needs to prioritize.

Preferably before his body does anything else illegal while he’s asleep. If people need him, they have his number.

It’s not like he’s sad that Anders and Stonefell are dead; quite the opposite in fact. Percy is no saint and he can admit that he’s definitely wished for just this on many an occasion. The issue is that he’s out of control, magic is involved, and he has a funny feeling that this isn’t going to work out favorably for him in the end.

Percy doesn’t care about dying, but he does care about dying before his family gets justice.

WIth a resigned sigh, Percy drops into his desk chair and opens his computer.

It’s easy to find information about anything on the internet; finding information that is reliable and trustworthy – from websites that he’s not afraid might give his computer some sort of magically enhanced virus – proves to be much harder. His search is not helped by the fact that any time he finds something that looks remotely promising, the website he’s on will crash, or a link will break, and when he refreshes the page, Percy will find himself struggling to remember what he was even looking at.

Nine hours of solid research, interrupted twice by people from his office calling, and once by the growling of his stomach, leaves Percy with a ferocious headache and very little else to show for his work.

Frustrated, he pushes away from his desk and begins to pace around the room. It’s early evening but dark has fallen and the moon has risen high in the sky. Silver moonlight throws the grounds of the estate into sharp relief and the massive oak tree casts a shadow that blankets much of the lawn below.

Percy walks towards the window and presses his forehead against it. His breath fogs the glass in time with his breathing.

There is a flicker of movement, something in the shadow of the tree that catches his eye and he cups his hands around his face, trying to see more clearly. It flickers again, and as he squints Percy can almost make out a definable shape.

The coin in his pocket flashes warm and the figure vanishes. Cold fear washes over his body like a wave.

Percy goes to bed with all the lights on that night, and doesn’t sleep a wink.

 

* * *

 

Vex is behind the sales counter, searching through their records for the item number for a particularly popular tarot deck, when Gilmore’s assistant Sherri returns from the Ivory Tower Cafe with coffee and gossip.

“You’ll never guess who died,” she says, as she plucks the paper cups from their cardboard carrying tray, setting two of them on the counter and walking the third over to Gilmore, who is arranging a display of fashionable-yet-practical potion brewing safety goggles more to his liking.

“Do tell.” Says Gilmore, sounding far too interested for such a morbid topic of conversation, as he takes the proffered cup, then pops open the cap to make sure there’s enough whipped cream and that Sherri didn’t forget to ask for the extra chocolate drizzle he likes.

“Kerrion Stonefell!” Sherri says cheerfully, leaning against the counter, looking between her co-worker and her boss, with a conspiratorial gleam in her eye.

“Oh,” says Gilmore, “yes I’d heard. It was on the news last night.”

Sherri’s face falls a little, but she recovers quickly. She and Gilmore have something of a friendly rivalry going to see who can stay the most on top of the local information. It’s a bit strange, given that Sherri tends towards stiffness and formality with everyone besides their boss, but this little competition has being going on since long before Vex knew either of them. “It’s a bit suspect though, don’t you think?”

Vex, who has finally located the elusive item number, scribbles it down on a notepad and logs out of the computer.

“Who are these people?” She asks, feeling out of the loop.

Gilmore takes a sip of his coffee, “Ah, yes, I forgot that you weren’t here back when Delilah Briarwood tried to buy me out. She and her husband moved here from Wildmount four years ago. It was big news at the time because they had a lot of magic and enjoyed showing it off.”

“Are these the same Briarwoods who were accused of the de Rolo murders?” Vex asks, hoping the answer is no. This is all starting to feel a bit convenient, like there’s an invisible web unfolding around her that she can’t quite see yet, but that is definitely going to mess her life up in a big way if she’s not very careful. Coincidence is not something that Vex believes in, and hearing about this whole Briarwood/de Rolo mess so many times so soon after Percy’s visit is making her anxious.

Gilmore nods. “One and the same.”

 _Of course,_ Vex thinks bitterly.

“Delilah made an offer to buy me out of this store, back when I had just opened, and to hire me on as a private researcher for some very secret project that she was orchestrating, but I didn’t like her vibe so I turned her down.” Gilmore gives an elegant shrug of his shoulders. “I was not the only one she was after though; several of the town’s more notable spellcasters quit their jobs unexpectedly and vanished from the public eye, as did a few other figures of interest, namely, in this case, our town sheriff, the late Mr. Stonefell.”

“It seems that public service just didn’t have quite the same appeal – or pay scale – as private security.” Says Sherri, thinly. “He stuck around with the police for just long enough to steer the de Rolo case into the ground then quit and went to work for the people he had spent the last six months investigating.”

“Well that’s not suspect at all,” Says Vex, as a sort of uncomfortable idea begins to take root in the back of her mind.

“Right?” Says Sherri, she drains the last of her coffee and leans over the counter to drop the cup into the trashcan, “But Stonefell got what was coming for him. It seems that his behavior didn’t exactly help with his public image because someone broke into his house last night and burned it down with him inside.”

“The Briarwoods must be furious,” says Gilmore, “Someone is murdering their way through all of their lackeys.”

Vex, who is taking a sip of her own coffee, accidentally drinks far too much and chokes, sputtering on the scalding hot liquid. Sherri pounds her on the back and Gilmore crosses the shop to hand her a handkerchief so she can wipe up the coffee that has escaped her lips.

“What?” She asks, once she gets control of her lungs again.

“I would have thought that you’d have heard; it happened in your neck of the woods after all. A couple weeks ago, their friend Anders, big shot professor from the University, died in a car fire in the Arts District.” Sherri says.

“Holy shit,” Vex says.

Sherri shrugs. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it; you’re not chummy with the Briarwoods, so I don’t think you’re in any danger.”

She keeps talking, but Vex is no longer listening.

Everything clicks into place and makes a sudden, terrifying kind of sense; somehow she just knows, Percy is responsible for this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My beta is out of town right now so any typos and errors are all mine. I've had such a tremendously shitty week but all of the feedback you guys have given me for this story has just brightened my life so much. It really means the world to me, you guys just don't even know. XOXOXOX
> 
> Kudos and comments are appreciated if you're enjoying the story and feel free to come yell at me on [tumblr](http://commandercait.tumblr.com) if you're so inclined.


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